Financial Business Review: Discover Wants Some Home Loans, JPMorgan REDEEMS

New to the mortgage origination business on Tuesday is Discover (NYSE:DFS), as it introduces Discover Home Loans, perhaps filling a void as Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) writes one out of three domestic mortgages and banking coin, due to a dearth of competition.

JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) is redeeming some $9 billion on high-cost trust preferred capital securities, since new rules from the Federal Reserve disallow the use of such paper at Tier 1 capital. However, Brennan Hawken at UBS says the move should allow JPM to see a small increase to earnings.

ING (NYSE:ING) was in a world of trouble with the Justice Department and the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (plus other authorities), but a deal is reached so that the company will see no further action taken if it meets certain conditions. It seems that ING breached United States sanctions on Iran and Cuba by assisting clients from those countries move billions of dollars though New York bank from the early 1990s until 2007. The firm is the fourth large bank to get caught with “stripping” wire transfer information to hide the illegal transfer of money, and then have to settle with authorities subsequently.